Self-Governing Factory: The Solidarity Revolution at the Enterprise Level and the Origins of Poland’s Market Reforms, 1980–81

“Self-Governing Factory” analyzes the Polish Solidarity revolution of 1980–81 and the resulting economic reforms from the micro-historical perspective of a single enterprise—the Small-Engine Car Factory (FSM) in Upper Silesia. The scholarly literature on Solidarity has so far focused primarily on the movement’s intellectuals and national leadership, and has thereby marginalized the industrial workplace, which was the very place where Solidarity arose and the center of its activities. Rather than providing a solution to Poland’s economic predicament, Solidarity’s actions at the factory level instead further undermined the Polish economy. By breaking down the institutional mechanisms and legitimacy of the Polish centrally planned economy, the trade union also unintentionally opened the doors for a gradual re-marketization of the Polish economy that culminated in the communist regime’s decision by the late 1980s to reestablish a market economy. Poland’s break with the Soviet economic model was thus to a substantial extent brought about by great societal upheaval, rather than solely by decisions at the top of the political system. Moreover, seen in a broader chronological framework, Poland’s re-marketization was a protracted evolutionary process, eroding the sharp distinction often drawn in the literature between radical reform in countries like Poland and Russia and Chinese gradualism. These perspectives open up new comparative research agendas on communist economic reforms and their post-communist repercussions. The article is based on original research using a wide variety of Polish-language primary sources, including factory newspapers and trade union publications, as well as state, Communist Party, and corporate archives.